Tuesday, 4 November 2014

Simplicity 1783

When I was living in the USA I made the most of their amazing pattern sales and stocked up on tons of patterns which I nabbed for a buck each! (unthinkable in NZ).

Cynthia Rowley for Simplicity are some of my favourite patterns so naturally I bought a few of those, including 1783.

The first two projects I decided to make were the blouses, which call for crepe, laundered silks-rayons etc. In short, light drapey fabrics which are not my usual fabric of choice. However I have learned through experience that it is best to follow the fabric advice on the patterns to avoid disasters. What sounds good in your mind, doesn't necessarily translate into a wearable garment.

I'm not much of a synthetics person but I can never say no to a bargain and I found a blue synthetic blue floral crepe fabric at Geoffs Emporium which I thought would be perfect for this project. I decided to make the long sleeved version first and make a red bias binding for the sleeves and neck to accent the red flowers and because red happens to be my favourite colour.

Once I figured what was going on with all the darts and pleats it was a pretty easy job. It was slightly bigger than anticipated and I found that I didn't need the invisible zip in the side as I could just slip it over my head.

I was pretty pleased with the first edition so I decided to keep going.

At a Fabric Store sale I picked up a gorgeous silk panel for a mere $12 which I thought would work great with the short sleeved version of the blouse. The panel was black with cream flowers and a pink geometric trim. I thought the pink trim would look great made into the bias binding for the neck and armbands. It was a bit fiddly as I had to cut out a ton of little bits of bias and sew them together. I probably wouldn't go through the hassle again but in the end it was worth it because it is an unexpected colour combination that works.

I found that the arms were too tight around my upper arms. I'm not sure if this was a byproduct of my hashed together bias binding or just a tight fit? Anyway I had to create slits at the end of the arms so as not to cut off the blood flow to the rest of my arms.